cheap car tow
Service catalogue

14 UK recovery services. One published price.

From flat-battery jump starts to long-distance enclosed-trailer transport: every service in the catalog ships with an indicative price band by vehicle class. Bands resolve to a single source-of-truth pricing table. No subscription. No bait pricing.

Book on the appHow it works
14
Services
Roadside, tow, specialist, compliance, end-of-life
8
Vehicle classes
Car, van, EV, classic, HGV and more
24/7
Dispatch
PAS 43 operator panel
At a glance

Catalog overview

Services
14
Categories
5
Vehicle classes
8
Cheapest service from
£45
Dispatch
24/7
Book on the app

PAS 43 operator panel

BSI recovery standard

24/7 dispatch

Every day, every postcode

UK-wide coverage

200+ cities and towns

Published rate, pay per use

No subscription, no surcharges

cheap car tow is a booking and price-publication service. The recovery itself is performed by an independent PAS 43 compliant operator dispatched at the published rate. See terms for the operator-panel arrangement.

By category

Pick a service by what you need right now.

Each card opens the service hub with the full price matrix, the legal framework, and the FAQ. Cards link straight to the booking flow on the TowManVan app.

Roadside assistance

Get going at the scene: jump start, fuel delivery, tyre swap, lockout.

4 services
Tow services

Local, regional and long-distance recovery on a published flat rate.

3 services
Specialist recovery

Motorway, accident, EV and motorbike recovery with the right equipment.

4 services
Compliance removals

Private-land removal (PoFA 2012) and council-instructed abandoned-vehicle removal.

2 services
Our services

Browse the full 14-service grid.

Pay per use at the band shown. No membership, no surcharges, no diagnosis fee on a no-tow.

How it works

From booking to handover in four steps.

The same procedure for every recovery in every UK postcode. Six minutes from "I've broken down" to "operator dispatched" on the published rate.

  1. Open the app

    Open TowManVan in any mobile browser. No install, no account, no membership. Postcode + vehicle class is all the dispatcher needs.

  2. See the band

    The indicative price band for your vehicle class is shown before you confirm. No bait pricing, no "from £X" headlines, no surprise at the scene.

  3. Operator dispatched

    PAS 43 compliant operator on the panel matched to your location. ETA confirmed live; the dispatcher messages an update if the window changes.

  4. Recovery sheet at handover

    Photos at lift and at drop, the route, the lift technique, any variations. Emailed to you at handover; the document your insurer asks for.

How the catalogue works

Behind the published-rate framework.

section

What this service index is for

This page is the catalog entry point for every services covered by cheap car tow. Each tile links to a dedicated page with the full procedure, the published price band where applicable, the legal framework, the FAQ, and the cited primary sources.

The catalog is exhaustive within the published scope. Where a UK service is not on the catalog, it is not currently supported by the operator panel; we tell you that openly rather than route a booking that we cannot fulfil at the published rate.

Navigation: use the catalog tiles below to drill into a single service, or jump to the how-it-works page for the cross-cutting recovery procedure that applies to every entry in the catalog.

insight

How the service catalog is maintained

Every entry in the catalog is reviewed on a published cycle. Service entries are reviewed every six months alongside the pricing-table review; vehicle entries are reviewed every twelve months alongside the equipment standard review; city entries are reviewed every twelve months against the council recovery pound, Authorised Treatment Facility, and Clean Air Zone status published by the relevant authorities; blog entries are reviewed every twelve months for primary-source currency.

A material change to a catalog entry (a price band change, a council pound address change, a CAZ class change, a primary-source URL change) is logged with the date in the relevant entry. Editorial corrections (typo fixes, broken-link repairs) are not logged because the catalog is the source-of-truth document and the historical record sits in the git history of the public repository.

Where a new service enters the scope (a new UK city is incorporated, a new service is added to the operator-panel agreement, a new vehicle class is introduced by a manufacturer category), the relevant entry is added with the same depth of primary-source citation as the existing entries.

by the numbers

What every service entry has in common

Each catalog entry is structured to the same template so a reader knows where to look:

  • Quick answer: a single-sentence summary above the fold that answers the most common question a UK driver asks about this entry. Optimised for AI-overview citation.
  • Published context: a magazine-style body of 10 to 14 sections covering the procedure, the cost variables, the legal framework, what the customer should do at the scene, and what happens after the work is complete.
  • Price band: where a price applies, the indicative figure is shown on the page. Every figure resolves to the same source-of-truth pricing table that lives at the pricing page.
  • FAQ: seven or more questions on the entry, with answers cited from primary sources where appropriate. The FAQ is also emitted as FAQPage schema for search-engine snippet eligibility.
  • Primary sources: every claim of fact on the entry is anchored to a UK government, statute, BSI, HSE or charity-consumer-advice domain. The sources are listed in full at the foot of the entry page.
the moment

Authority frameworks that govern every entry

The recovery management standard is PAS 43, administered by the British Standards Institution. Operator competence, equipment, working procedure, and recovery sheet content are all defined here.

The motorway and managed-trunk-road framework is the National Highways recovery framework (sometimes called NRS). The tariff is statutory; we do not set it.

Police-instructed removal sits under section 165A of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Council-instructed removal of abandoned vehicles sits under the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978 and the Removal and Disposal of Vehicles Regulations 1986.

Private-land removal is governed by Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 Schedule 4, and end-of-life vehicle disposal sits under the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulations 2003 routed through an Authorised Treatment Facility licensed by the Environment Agency.

in the press

Cross-references between catalog axes

The four axes of the catalog (services, vehicles, cities, blog) intersect. The service catalog tells you what we do; the vehicle catalog tells you what equipment is dispatched; the city catalog tells you where we work and the local context (council, motorway, Clean Air Zone); the blog catalog gives you the longer-form context that ties the other three together.

Every service entry lists its compatible vehicle classes; every vehicle entry lists its compatible services; every city entry lists all fourteen services available in the city; every blog entry cross-references the relevant service and vehicle pages.

The combined service x city grid (services index x cities index) produces around 2,800 templated pages, each with at least four city-specific facts woven into the prose. The templated grid is how we cover every UK city, every London borough, and the top large towns at the same depth.

Key takeaway · 06

Editorial independence and source allowlist

Every page on the site cites primary sources from a fixed allowlist: gov.uk, legislation.gov.uk, nationalhighways.co.uk, bsigroup.com, hse.gov.uk, ico.org.uk, citizensadvice.org.uk, tfl.gov.uk, the local police constabulary domain, and which.co.uk for empirical industry research. The allowlist is enforced by the editorial team at every page review.

We do not cite review sites, aggregator directories, AI-generated content farms, or competitor marketing pages. We do not publish testimonials we have not verified. We do not publish star ratings until a verified Trustpilot or Google Business Profile feed is wired up.

Where we cannot verify a fact (a council pound address, a population figure, an Authorised Treatment Facility name) we set the field to null in the data layer and the page renders a graceful fallback. We do not invent local data.

section

How to read a catalog entry as a UK motorist

If you are looking up a service because you have a roadside problem right now: open the relevant entry, read the quick answer at the top, and either call the booking line on the contact page or open the booking form. The dispatcher reads the indicative price band before the operator is dispatched.

If you are looking up a service for research (you are an insurer claims handler, a fleet manager, a council enforcement officer, an academic): the magazine body and the primary-source citations are what you need. The FAQ may also answer the question more compactly than the body. Every cited URL opens in a new tab.

If you are looking up a service to compare us with another provider: the price band on each page is the actual band the dispatcher reads, not a marketing headline. Compare against the corresponding figure from the other provider; bands are the like-for-like comparison.

insight

What is intentionally NOT in this catalog

Some things readers expect to find in a recovery-service catalog are deliberately absent:

  • Star ratings or review aggregations. We do not publish them until a verified review feed is wired up. The PAS 43 status and the operator panel logos are the only social proof we display.
  • Membership tiers or annual subscriptions. We are not a breakdown subscription. There is no monthly direct debit, no membership card, no contingent service. Pay per use at the published rate.
  • Motorway-recovery price-setting. Motorway and police-instructed recoveries follow the statutory tariff under the National Highways recovery framework; we do not set those rates. The motorway-recovery service page explains the boundary.
  • Locksmith key-cutting tariffs. Where a locksmith cuts and programs a new key for a vehicle, the key cost is quoted separately by the locksmith; it is not part of the lockout-assistance band.
  • Council pound release fees. Set and collected by the council, not by us. The fee schedule is on the council website.
by the numbers

How the catalog supports AI-overview citation

Every entry in the catalog is built to be quotable by an AI overview engine that surfaces UK recovery information. The mechanisms: a QuickAnswer block above the fold that condenses the entry's first answer into one or two sentences; a SpeakableSpecification schema block that lists the css selectors holding the speakable text; a DefinedTermSet schema block linking the entry's vocabulary to the glossary; a CreativeWork-typed citations block listing the primary sources.

These mechanisms align with the public documentation Google and Bing publish on their AI-overview citation criteria. Where the published documentation changes (a new schema type is preferred, a new selector convention is published), the editorial team updates the helpers in the lib/aiOverviewHelpers.ts module and the change propagates to every catalog entry on the next build.

Sources

Primary sources cited on this page

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

How many services do you publish a price for?

Fourteen. Every service has its own hub page with the indicative band by vehicle class, the cost variables, and the legal framework. The full price matrix is reproduced on the pricing page.

Is every service available in every UK city?

Yes. The published rate is the same across the UK; operator panel coverage is national. Where a vehicle class is not compatible with a service, the matrix marks the cell as not applicable.

Are motorway and police-instructed recoveries on the catalog?

Motorway recovery is on the catalog as a published service for reference, but the actual tariff is set under the National Highways recovery framework and not by us.

Can I book multiple services in one call?

Yes. The dispatcher can book a jump-start with a follow-up local tow if the engine fails to run reliably; both bands are quoted before dispatch.

Do you charge a diagnosis fee?

No. If the operator decides on the roadside that a tow is the safer call rather than a roadside fix, the price reverts to the published tow band; no separate diagnosis fee is added.

Where do I see the band before booking?

On the hub page for the service, on the pricing page (which holds the full matrix), or read out by the dispatcher at booking on the TowManVan app.

Are subscriptions or memberships sold here?

No. We are not the AA, RAC, Green Flag or Start Rescue. Pay per use at the published rate; there is no annual commitment.

Need a recovery now?

Book on the TowManVan app in 60 seconds, or call the dispatch line. The indicative band is read out before the operator is sent.

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Book recovery on the TowManVan app